Darren Aronofsky, whose psycho-thriller Black Swan is expected to figure prominently in the upcoming awards season, has signed on to direct the thriller Machine Man.

Mandalay Pictures secured film rights to the partial manuscript by Max Barry in November last year. Aronofsky and Mandalay will work with Mark Heyman to adapt the book for the screen.

Barry’s interactive literary experiment is being published one page a day in real time as an online serial and will be published as a complete novel by Vintage Books next spring.

Cathy Schulman will produce through Mandalay and Barry will serve as executive producer. Vice-president Adam Stone is overseeing the project for Mandalay.

The story centres on a tech firm engineer who replaces parts of his body with titanium, unaware that he is not the only one experimenting with biotech implants.

Mandalay is currently preparing The Untitled Elephant Project with New Line / Warner Bros, as well as When Dads Were Men with Mike McCullers at CBS and Sinatra with Martin Scorsese at Universal.

The company is in post-production on Salvation Blvd starring Pierce Brosnan, Ed Harris, Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly and Marisa Tomei.

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